


Bring Me a Dream

by sunflowerprince



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Asexual Character, Dark Avatar Martin Blackwood, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, absolute wish fulfillment, and jon is up to his usual bad life decisions, be the fic you wish to see in the world, death and his many friends, in which martin is an avatar of the dark, own voice ace rep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28422882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerprince/pseuds/sunflowerprince
Summary: Lying there, trapped in a body broken by the Unknowing, Jonathan Sims heard every word Oliver Banks spoke into the dim hospital room.But Oliver Banks wasn't the only supernatural visitor Jon had.Or: Enter Martin as the Sandman, lurking in the back of Jon's mind.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Martin Blackwood
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Bring Me a Dream

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to Mr. Sandman by SYML one (1) time and my gay heart ran away with this story on fast legs.

_“Um. Hello, Jon. D’you_ …mind _if I call you Jon? I, I mean, you don’t_ actually _know me. It’s just, well. ‘Archivist.’ It’s so formal, isn’t it?”_

The sighing, self-conscious voice reached Jon through a sort of veil. He was dimly aware of the weight of his body, the hospital bed beneath him that kept him grounded in reality, its exact dimensions stymying the sensation of him being reduced to a meagre handful of brainwaves. He knew he was neither alive nor dead, his own ghost trapped within the cicada shell of his damaged body.

And here was Oliver Banks/Antonio Blake, unspooling ugly, unnatural truths, feeding them into his half-corpse that was as eager to consume as it was to perish. Jon could hardly keep his mind straight, keen on the story unraveling before him but distracted by the phantom sensations of shrapnel and cacophony, by the ache of his body calling his wandering mind home.

_“Let me tell you how_ I _tried to escape.”_

The narrative was almost as much energy and image as it was sound punctuated by measured silence. It was a painful, wretched, _decadent_ experience—Jon could see the sick obsidian roots anchoring Oliver, see the network they wove, feel the chord struck along the string of future corpses. Jon could hear the chittering of this map of death where it intersected with Oliver, who himself was just a nexus, a weigh station, in the great blueprint of Death. Jon could feel the rubbery tendrils that outlined Oliver’s life, feel the piercing cold of their nebulous bodies. For just a moment Jon was in tune with the whole of it, mind feverish with the terrible premonitions of the hospital—he could feel, like an oil spill across his soul, the impending fatality of the woman on the other side of the wall, who had come in for a minor procedure and oh, the scissors and the scalpel would find much, much worse—

If Jon was a cohesive entity, if his mind and spirit and body were in tandem, he might just be sick.

The words washed over and through him—Oliver’s futile journey to Point Nemo, on the lam from Death itself. Jon could feel the deck of the ship beneath his phantom soles, hear the crack of a gunshot, feel the gentle, coiling, _loving_ embrace of the Inevitable End. He could see the stark terror on the crew’s faces, feel the abandoned words in Oliver’s lungs as he was smashed to bits and born again.

_Smashed to bits and born again._ The thought echoed in the empty chamber of his heart, in that tricky crevice between his body and his mind. 

_“Right. That’s, uh, it, I suppose. Maybe you heard me. Maybe you’ll dream. Then again, maybe I just wasted my breath—but, I don’t think so.” A sigh. “Honestly, I’m still not exactly sure why I’m here. But you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what she asks.” The scrape of a chair, the squeak of trainers on cold, unfeeling hospital tile. “The thing is, Jon—right now you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time, but right now it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive. You’re balanced on an edge where the End can’t touch you, but you can’t escape him.” Another sigh. “I made a choice. We all made choices. Now you have to—”_

_The door clicking, opening, shutting._

_“Can I help you.” A voice, low, feminine, and oh, so flat. So empty._

Pinpricks like fireflies lit up in Jon’s brain—he knew that voice, knew it in all its murmurs and teases and—

_“…Make your choice, Jon.”_

Jon sucked in a harsh breath, hand pressed to his chest, eyes seeking purchase and finding not the bland hospital room in washes of grey and blue he expected, but a, a—

Well, he didn’t know really. There were stacks of books on the—hm, floor was not exactly the right descriptor. It wasn’t—it wasn’t even a room, really. There wasn’t even the finest distinction between what might be called the dimensions of the space. He glanced up and the books extended like a literary Roman column into infinity. Unnerved to say the least, Jon bent to drag the tips of his long, slender fingers across what served as the floor, curious as to what was holding his weight. He let out a noise of surprise and disgust as his fingers came back sticky with an obsidian, viscous fluid. He held his defiled hand apart from his body, eyes searching before he settled on the nearest pillar of books and made to wipe off whatever the foul substance was.

“Hey!” 

Jon jolted, turning whip-quick towards the voice. His eyes landed on a figure clad in a lavender knit jumper. As the figure approached, Jon noted the being looked mostly like a man—full, round figure, disheveled curls that fell in a black spill across their forehead, round spectacles framing warm hazel eyes, freckles like flecks of gold—literally gleaming—dashed across their cheeks and the bridge of their nose.

“That is a perfectly good collection of Keats. Wipe your hand off on this.” The figure—Jon Knew they were not human, he could practically feel it viscerally in his very bones—offered a strip of fabric, unspooled from seemingly nothing, like a scarf from a magician’s sleeve. After nigh a minute of Jon simply staring, the figure tsked. “Will you please?”

Fumblingly, Jon took the cloth as if it might grow teeth. Under the other man’s weighted, impatient gaze, he scrubbed off his hand. Once his flesh was raw with the friction of it, he looked around, at a loss. 

“Now that you’re not ruining my collection—these are first editions, you know—it’s quite a pleasure to finally meet you, Archivist.” 

Jon perked up. Wariness flooded him in a low buzz. He had become unused to feeling much of anything, suspended such as he was between existing and—well, not. “How do you know my name? Who are you?”

“You’ve been quite a diversion of mine for a long time—can I call you Jonathan? A little familiar, I know, between professionals, but let’s drop the titles shall we? I hardly expect you to call me the Sandman—Martin Blackwood, by the way, Martin, if you will.” The creature—was that rude to say? Probably—rambled on pleasantly. 

“’Sandman.’” Jon repeated dully.

The other man—while not entirely accurate, it was far more polite, Jon decided—stopped as Jon cut through his amiable monologue. “Yes, quite, but don’t say it like that, will you. I’m not claiming to be Santa Claus or anything, no need to be derisive.” 

“Are we—am I _dreaming_?” 

“Kind of you to notice.” Martin flashed a bright, disarming smile. “I belatedly realise this must be rather jarring for you, you’ve only been dipping your toes into this business until rather recently, haven’t you? This conversation is best had over a good cuppa, hm?” 

Jon parted his lips to speak but his jaw snapped shut as their surroundings… _dissolved_. The process was slippery in his brain, he couldn’t track any definitive points in it. Where there once were pillars of handbound and finely pressed books and that fathomless pool beneath his feet, there were the latticed walls of a gazebo and the firmness of wood under him. They were, in fact, in some kind of gazebo, lit by fairy lights that punctured the darkness that stretched around them with no visible end. Part of Jon wanted to step off the edge of the wooden floor and walk and walk and walk until he found the end of this strange dimension, if there was one to be found. 

“Will you sit? Makes me nervous to have you the only one standing.”

Jon dragged his gaze away from the endless horizon. He eased himself into his seat, lightly trembling hands closing around the waiting mug, drawn to the mundane warmth. It had a poorly drawn cat on it. He peered down into its contents, skeptical.

Martin took a deep sip of his own tea as if to prove a point. “It’s just the memory of tea.” He shrugged. “It can’t hurt you unless you let it.”

“Unless I let it?” Despite himself, that maw inside of him that ravened for knowledge, that parasite Curiosity, snapped its teeth at all the prospects this strange dimension offered. “And what do you mean the memory of tea?”

“It’s like drinking the impression of tea.” He gave another of those smiles that promised goodwill. It put Jon on edge. “If it makes you feel better, you technically made it yourself.”

Jon’s brow furrowed. “Where are we? Is this—is this in my head?”

Martin nodded. “Oversimplification, but for the purposes of our business, yes, let’s keep it simple.”

“And what business is that.” Jon said evenly. He had made the mistake of letting his belief in all this— _monstrosity_ bloom. Now it seemed it was creeping ever closer, insinuating itself into the fabric of his life. 

“You heard Ollie. It’s up to you now, to decide what you’re going to be.” Martin said levelly as he took another sip. 

Jon frowned. So that hadn’t been a figment of his imagination, all that talk from Oliver Banks. He felt phantoms in his brain—bare wisps of memories of other voices. Pleading, loving. Mourning. “To die and be human or to live and be a monster.”

“No need to be so dour.” Martin pushed a hand through his messy curls. He had a humming energy about him.

Jon narrowed his eyes. “You said you were the Sandman. I took a statement about a proclaimed Sandman once—it felt—it _was_ real, there’s a sort of—static taste to the real ones—the ones that will only record on cassette.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, then snapped his fingers. “The doctor. Algernon Moss. _Maxwell Rayner_.” He snapped his gaze back to Martin, who calmly sipped his tea. “Was that you? That… _thing_ with the shards of black glass?”

Martin sniffed. “Awfully judgy for someone in your position. Yes. I’m ‘ _that thing_.;”

Jon’s hand gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles were taut and pale despite his brown skin. “You don’t look like what I imagined. Is that even your real face?”

Martin smiled, and this time it was a dangerous thing, teeth flashing sharp. When he began talking again, his teeth were even. Jon’s heartbeat didn’t slow. “This is the face I was born with. But here, I can be anything. _You_ could be...well, not anything, but different. If you were fluent in dreams.” He ran his finger along the brim of his mug and it refilled itself, evident by the fresh curl of steam that arose. “This is my playground, after all. I’m the king of the hill, as it were. So I get to make the rules.”

“I thought we were in _my_ head.”

“Oh, we are.” He smiled again, and there was a keen light to his eyes as he tilted his head. “And doesn’t that just make you comfortable. But you don’t need to worry. I’m not visiting to hurt you, Jonathan.”

“Jon.” He interjected on reflex. The only people who called him by his full name were his grandmother and Elias and he hated it equally. 

Martin raised a brow. “Jon.”

“You hurt Algernon Moss well enough. Blinded him.”

The Sandman huffed. “It’s not my fault he gave me that power by actualizing the terror. And might I remind you _he_ stole my glass. He blinded himself. But if that’s what you’re concerned with, don’t be. The Watcher wouldn’t abide it if I severed its connection to his little favourite.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jon said stiffly. The Eye and him had no _connection_ , not beyond his involuntary tie to the Institute.

Martin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, alright. Tell yourself what feels good. But what exactly do you think is keeping you alive after a supernatural explosion? Your sheer force of will?” He snorted and Jon bristled. 

“What do you want with me?” He wanted to get to the meat of it. He didn’t know where he would go from here, where there was to go, but he definitely didn’t want to linger in whatever _this_ was.

Martin shrugged. “I’m on loan. Paying back a pesky debt, actually. Ollie told you what your choice was. It’s simple and unavoidable, so I suggest you make a decision before something else does for you.” 

“Is that a threat.”

The other man sighed. “You really are overestimating your importance to me. The Dark is not much concerned with you. Even you can’t see through our depths.”

“You said that’s the face you were born with. Are you—did you make a _choice_.” The word ‘choice’ left his mouth as bitter as it tasted. It was almost laughable, really, to consider anything about this a choice.

“I’m not here to tell you bedtime stories.” He said dryly.

“ _ **Tell me**_ —” Jon began, but soon choked off. He drew his hands to his throat, eyes wide as his voice was trapped.

“None of that.” Martin said crossly. “Yes, I made a choice. That’s all you need to know. And it’s rather uncannily like the one before you. I feed my patron nightmares and the things that go bump in the night, or rather, the fear those generate. You’ll be required to make offerings if you want to live. If you want to keep the power that beats beneath that voice of yours. The knowledge creeping into your brain.”

“I won’t.” His voice returned, it came out in a whisper. “I won’t be something like you.”

“Can we skip the high horse bit? Understandable, been there, but it’s useless ultimately. You’re already sneaking the Eye snacks with your statements and that little party trick of yours. And it’s feeding you in return. And as they say—eventually you must feed what feeds you. Your petty little offerings won’t sustain you for long. Can’t you feel it growing in you? The gnawing.” 

Jon began to shake his head insistently, but aborted the motion. He’d left his denial behind and now he couldn’t obscure what he knew, what he felt. It wasn’t in his _nature_. “What’s with all of this. Why go through the trouble?” He gestured at the vacuum surrounding them. But now that he was more attune to the foundation of this space, he could feel its roiling potential, his innate potential to shape things. He could feel his dreams—more often nightmares, recently, when he even slept at all—pressing against the obsidian, trying to break through. He suspected they were held at bay by the man sitting across from him.

“The Eye is surprisingly keen on consent. Being _fully aware_.” He smirked. “Only you can give yourself up fully to its power and, in this case, ensure your survival. Make no mistake, without the sustenance of the Eye and your committed service, you will die, Jon. You will not leave this hospital bed.” Martin placed a hand on the table, pushing himself up to stand. The mug began to coalesce up along with its steam, dissolving. The edges of what lay around them followed suit. “I’m here to give you a tour. A ride-along, if you will.” 

Before Jon could even contemplate responding, they were elsewhere. He immediately recognised they were no longer within the confines of his mind. He felt shaky, as if his mind was in shock from the displacement. Absently, Martin pressed a steadying hand into his shoulder. Jon flinched away, pulling his arms around himself.

“Bit jarring if you’re not a frequent traveler.” The corner of Martin’s mouth kicked up. “The reason Oliver unknowingly passed the baton to me is we’re much the same. What you’ll grow into, if you choose to Become. In broad strokes, at least. You unravel stories. You witness. I create stories. When I enter a mind like this one—” He gestured loosely at the landscape, an abstract haberdashery of the odds and ends of daily life. It had the air of creation, as if it were merely pooling source material, near to being something more cohesive. “—I pinpoint what lurks in the subconscious, ready to go feral at a moment’s notice. At that sweet precipice of dream and nightmare, I push it over the edge, dredging up the things with teeth. It’s up to the dreamer how much power they allow their dreams, though most dreamers aren’t very skilled at all, quite passive. And thus it’s more a matter of damage than power for most people.” He made a series of little gestures as if he were casting a spell or—more realistically—knitting something out of thin air. Golden thread burned the air, forming a Cat’s Cradle of—Jon wasn’t sure, exactly. His mind scraped and scratched at it but he couldn’t gain purchase. The space around them began to shift into focus. They were in a long corridor that seemed to stretch forever, lit by neon lights in various shapes and texts. There was the sound of footsteps coming nearer that escalated into a pounding. There was a woman running toward them, and then by them. 

“Is that—”

“The dreamer, yes.” Martin said placidly. 

She ran on and on, a speck in the distance in one moment, then passing by them in the next.

“Where is she going?” Jon whispered, though he Knew she couldn’t perceive him.

“For now? Nowhere. It’s rather boring, as nightmares go. I’m going to spice it up in a moment, but I wanted you to get a taste of what it will be like for you.”

“For me—?”

“You won’t be able to affect matters at all. No, your role is to Witness.”

Jon’s brow furrowed. That didn’t seem too bad, in comparison. Not relative to Martin, in the role of the Sandman, spinning these nightmares, with that appreciative, hungry light to his eyes. He seemed sharper here, like he was only ever rounding out his edges for Jon’s benefit when they were inside the domain of Jon’s own skull. Or maybe Jon had just wanted to see him that way.

“But that’s a bit misleading, isn’t it. Don’t be mistaken—we are, all of us, patchworks of hunger and harvest. You’ll pull these stories out of people and they might feel the better for it for awhile, a weight lifted from the halls of their minds. But when they close their eyes, when they submit themselves to sleep—those stories will be seeds you watered anew, planted deeper in the underbellies of their brains. What haunted them at the fringes will be given new life and you will stand witness to it all. And they will feel you, see you and they will know as you know, that it is your fault that they are trapped in the snow globe of their worst memories.” He shook his head, almost pityingly. “And you will burn with regret and desire in equal measure.” He began knitting nothing again, and the scenery bled into someplace new. The woman was running still, always running, eternal prey. But this time her pursuer had flesh and form. Too much flesh. Too many forms. Jon wanted to look away but he wanted to look seek understand more than that flinching impulse. 

Entranced, he watched as the concoction of various people conjoined by excess meat and marrow roiled toward the woman faster than an abomination like that should be able to, especially considering it didn’t have enough legs to go around. “What is that.” Jon uttered, horrified.

“All the people she’s stepped on to get to the top. All the people she’s abandoned in their time of need. A manifestation of all the nasty things she’s done and the reminders of things she should have done. Always running toward the next accomplishment, that one.” If Jon had run into Martin on the street, Jon would have nearly skipped over him, he was that unassuming. He wasn’t plain, per se. He was handsome bordering on pretty with his cherubic cheeks and dark curls. And those inexplicably glimmering freckles, that, on second thought, looked rather like gleaming sand scattered across his features. Now that he was paying attention, there was that satchel resting against his hip, full of what Jon Knew to be darkness itself rendered slashing and unforgiving. All of this to say, if Jon _wasn’t_ making an effort to See Martin, if he’d just brushed against him going about his day, he would not have expected the steel beneath the sunshine. He seemed like he should be softness incarnate, more likely prone to tucking people in and kissing them on their temples than weaving their nightmares darker and darker, not merely surviving by but reveling in their terror. Jon wondered if Martin indeed had been that gentle presence before he was plunged into the Dark himself. Or sought it out.

He wondered if all Avatars became like this, in the end. Their humanity slipping away. Losing themselves.

“You enjoy this.” He said numbly as he watched Martin watch the woman fall, scramble, drag herself along by broken nails and bleeding knuckles. 

“Mm. I didn’t used to. Well. I told myself that, in the beginning. Truth is I didn’t want this, didn’t ask for this, but it was this or be consumed by the Dark myself. Only so many nights you can stay awake before you have to succumb to it, y’know.” Jon didn’t Know, not really. It was like he was scratching at the door, a dog out in the cold asking to be let in. 

“Is this all you are.” He asked, though it was too flat to really be a question. It was a fear, voiced in the abstract. He recognised that much.

Martin frowned. “No. I’m not just some Boogeyman who slips from dream to dream. I have a life. Well, not much of one, admittedly. I haven’t been in the real world in awhile. Probably in a spot of trouble about my flat, now that I think of it. I’m at least half a year behind on rent.”

“You—” Jon shook his head, disbelieving. “You have a _flat_? Oh my god they probably think you’re dead. Or in a coma. Wait. Are you here in the hospital?”

“We’re not in the hospital right now.” Martin said gently. “Thought you were in dire need of a change of scenery.” Jon looked at him, incredulous. “And no. I’m—hmm. I’m not entirely sure, actually. I haven’t been in my own mind for a hot minute. I’m definitely not at my flat.”

“Your own—are you telling me you _don’t know where your body is!_ ” He spluttered.

Martin looked at him askance, unbothered. “No.” He cocked his head. “I think it’s surrounded by plants. Greenhouse, maybe? I suppose it could be the Mausoleum. Convenient, no one thinks to bother you there.”

“You might be in _someone else’s tomb_!”

Martin tsked. “No, that would be rude. It’s in the Rayner family, and it is empty. Except for maybe me, that is. And maybe Maxwell but—” He made a cutting off gesture. “Beside the point. Forget that.” Jon felt a buzz in the back of his skull and he looked on, dazed. Forget what?

That was too much for Jon, _really_. He shook his head free of it, not letting himself spiral into all the implications and follow up questions. He limited himself to being unnerved that he was more concerned with where the stranger’s body was than, you know, _the guy whose body it was_.

“If it bothers you that much I can check in on it.” Martin offered, seemingly more bothered with Jon’s discomfort than anything else. 

“I—yes. I don’t know why but I’d appreciate that.” He had no business caring for this practical stranger, this _monster_. But there was something charming about him, something well meaning, despite the cruel streak, the bit that wanted to chew people up as they slept.

Martin nodded. “I’ll be just a tick.” He blipped out, then, and Jon immediately regretted the request. He hugged himself tight, no longer tricked into feeling steady inside someone else’s head. 

He tried to make the best of it. He tried to make it _better_ , focusing so hard on shifting the narrative, of freeing the woman from her desperate clawing, of ridding himself of the little jolt in his stomach it gave him, the way it made him lean forward, draw a bit nearer. 

It was no use. It only gave him a twinging headache. He grimaced.

The tension bled out of his shoulders when Martin reappeared, coalescing into his Martin-shape from shadowy tendrils that reached out, grasping with phantom hands with sharp fingers, only to collapse in on themselves. 

“I’m at the Institute, funnily enough.” He beamed. “Feel better?”

“Why are you—what are you doing _there_?” The idea of Martin’s empty shell lying about, inert, in his _domain_ —his _place of work_ , he amended—made him ill. He wasn’t sure what the feeling stemmed from but he decidedly did not like it one bit. 

“Elias is keeping an eye on me. Oh. Isn’t that ironic? Can’t believe I forgot. He’s putting me up in the tunnels, keeping me safe. Not a shred of light. Rather thoughtful.”

“You’re in the _tunnels_?” And for at least half a year, he said? That meant a whole man had been—was—beneath their feet this whole time, during the Prentiss infestation, during—

“That’s what I said.” Martin looked confused, like he thought Jon might be a tad dense. “Why do you care? Not like you’re using them.” 

That startled a laugh out of Jon. No, he certainly wasn’t using the tunnels as a bed and breakfast.

“Anyways.” Martin said, turning his attention back to the woman who was still clawing her way forward on bloody knubs. The horrible mass was gaining on her, nearly at her heels. “We’re done here, I think.” He knit that golden thread, pulling it taut then severing it, as if finishing a particularly intricate pattern. 

The mass overtook the woman, her ragged screams soon suffocated by the roiling flesh and tangled limbs. 

“Oh my god.” Jon uttered.

Martin reached into his satchel and Jon flinched away. The Sandman glanced up at him, smiling wryly. He dug around and retrieved a handful of shining golden sand. 

“What are you doing?” Jon remained tensed as if to—well, he didn’t know he could do much but he was ready to _try_.

“Unlike the Eye, the Dark doesn’t benefit from reoccurring nightmares.” He let the sand sift through his fingers. It was an unexpectedly pretty image—the contrast of Martin’s sharp, over-jointed obsidian hands with the brilliant sand. It dispersed as if on a wind, then winked out of sight. “So I make them forget. They might wake up scared, but they’ll only have a vague sense of fear.” He looked Jon up and down, and for some reason Jon’s cheeks warmed a little at the inspection. “Before you get too sentimental—this does serve to reinforce their fear of the Dark, knowing something indiscernible and uncontrollable might just be lurking in its recesses.”

Jon didn’t quite buy the dismissiveness. He felt that, given his lot, the Sandman might have a sliver of humanity still driven deep in his chest, if he cared enough to protect his victims as much as he could. Maybe—just maybe—there was a way to exist like this, doing minimal harm. Or no harm, he thought fiercely. He might—the idea was as sick as it was sweet—succumb, offer himself up to the Eye in exchange for life—he so wanted to live—he might be able to hold out against the craving, the need to rip stories from throats and always find _new, new, new,_ things to sate him. Yes. He was sure he could. Just like kicking a nicotine habit. Never mind he hadn’t tried yet kicking his nicotine habit, the point was it was _possible_ , quite _doable_. 

“Alright, then. Best get you home.” Martin sighed.

Jon felt immediate relief at slipping back into his own skull. 

“Where will you go?” He didn’t know why he cared to ask. He chalked it up to that never-waning curiosity built into him since he was a child. 

“Mm. I think it might be time to have a walkabout on your side of things.” Martin said, thoughtful. “See if I’m being sued for skipping out on rent. Really hope they assumed I’m dead on that one. Ooh, and a panini would be killer.”

Another laugh startled out of Jon. He registered with surprise that he was… _enjoying_ the company of this objectively terrible and morally askew Avatar. It had been so long since he actively enjoyed another’s company outside of being prisoners of the same war, as he’d begun to think of as his relationships—friendships, even—at the Institute. 

“Have you decided, then? This isn’t a ghost of Christmases past, present, and future situation. No one else is coming for you. You have to make a choice.”

The mirth left Jon’s face as he accepted the inevitability of it all. He knew he couldn’t put it off forever, this gamble with his soul. His body could only endure so much.

“I really hope you choose to live, you know.” Martin said, almost shyly. “It’s not so bad a gig, if you lean into it. You can still be yourself at the end of the day.” He looked down at his eldritch hands, the way the shadows creeped up his forearms until they blended seamlessly into his pale skin. His mouth twisted in a sad smile. “In a lot of important ways, anyways. If you do—I’d love to see you again. You’re pretty interesting, Archivist.” He smiled without a trace of wistfulness. “Pretty. And interesting.” He winked and Jon barely had time to register the bloom of blush beginning in his cheeks before Martin dissipated and he was alone with himself. Always back to being alone with himself.

And in that soft, silent space, he made a decision.

He opened his eyes.


End file.
